Princess Helena Fairmont's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Princess Helena Fairmont rolled up to her desk inside the red barn she had claimed as her own. The horses shifted in their stalls behind her. Two years of planning sat in the metal cabinet against the wall. Every record she needed to turn these stables into a real racing operation lived inside it. A fresh stack of budget papers waited on her desk. She flipped to the signature page. The advisor's name stared back at her, approving cuts to her stable funds. The same hand. The same loops. Helena wheeled to the cabinet and unlocked the bottom drawer. She lifted out the bound stack of files she had built for three years. Invoice numbers that led nowhere. Payments to suppliers that did not exist. She set the bound files beside the new budget and matched the signatures line by line. They were identical. She closed the folder and rested her palm on top. He had just signed his name to the very thing she could destroy him with. Helena reached for her pen and began drafting her reply.